Essay 2--Mission Statement

Thunderbird Mission: "We educate global leaders who create sustainable prosperity worldwide."

In order to create sustainable prosperity in the future, I will adopt a network that utilizes connecting people to resources which will maintain and grow by themselves.  They must be able to continue on their own accord and benefit the community.  While having short-term benchmarks, the goals must be long-term focused.  All the while, the system must keep in mind that we are all part of one global community.  At the core, sustainable prosperity must endure while benefiting society.

As a future Thunderbird alumna, I look forward to combining an MBA-GM from Thunderbird with my past experience to contribute to sustainable prosperity throughout my career.  My past work included programs which taught entrepreneurship to people in a developing country to help them within their own society. These programs are easily done at the ground-level by setting up business incubators taught by locally trained professionals.  Business education is also about creating trusting relationships which bridge partnerships within countries and internationally.  Also, I will continue to maintain the highest-level of integrity, ethics, and responsibility.  Leadership by example, when words and language fail, still communicates the message of benefiting society.  Maintaining my own level of well-being in staying healthy and continuing to learn will add to the prosperity and longevity of my success and ability to carry on the aims of Thunderbird School of Global Management.  

There are many companies who serve as an example of sustainable prosperity with long-term goals structured in helping the global community.  Starting with Thunderbird’s “Thunderbird for Good” program, the goal is to educate entrepreneurs from developing countries with practical knowledge to use in their communities.  Next, USAID, with whom I have worked in Macedonia, is another organization committed to prosperity as seen in their “Business without Borders” program which helps facilitate new and supports existing enterprises. The UN’s “Millennium Development Goals” has already met three important targets on poverty, slums, and water well ahead of their 2015 target date. An organization which values optimism, collaboration, rigor, and innovation is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, “working to help all people lead healthy, productive lives”.  In today’s BBC World Report, I read about an enterprising young woman, Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, who started the Ethiopian eco-sustainable SoleRebles shoe company which started with an investment of less than $10,000 to use local materials by local people.  It is the long-term goals of these organizations that contribute to the betterment of the global community.

With innovation and technology, the world has seemed smaller with more immediate connections to people across the globe.  As the economies of developing countries grow, only time will tell if they will enact fair-trade agreements, invest in education and local infrastructure, and move out of poverty.  In 2011, Estonia graduated from a developing country to an advanced economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.  Estonia has among the highest percent of educated adults with high school diplomas, spends almost 1.5 percent of its GDP on Research and Development, and boasts that their developers created Skype.  Many countries can use Estonia’s example of free trade regime, a balanced budget, and innovative e-services to lift them out of poverty.  Even in today’s economy, it is possible to create sustainable prosperity by keeping short-term benchmarks which create long-term impacts for the good of society.

In order to achieve my goal of creating maintainable prosperity in developing communities, it is important for them to adapt the tools and lessons I teach them.  Therefore, it is the sentiment of Lao Tzu about building sustainable development that I remember when I travel to a new community: learn from them, and live with them.  As I influence them, and they adapt the lessons I teach, my community partners will say that they have done the work themselves.  The true goal of any community development guide is to create a level of sustainability where your absence is not noticed in their work, but in their hearts.